Otto Marx (piano maker)

Otto Marx (born March 4, 1871 in Dresden ; † September 29, 1964 in Behringersmühle , Franconian Switzerland ) was a German musical instrument restorer and piano maker .

Life

Otto Marx was the youngest of five sons of the piano maker Carl Gottlieb Marx in Dresden. After learning his father's profession, he worked, among other things, in Stuttgart at CA Pfeiffer, where he became a trainer for Walter Pfeiffer and was involved in the manufacture of mechanical models and making historical pianos playable. In 1909 Wilhelm Heyer hired him as a restorer of his important private music museum in Cologne. When the Heyer collection came to the University of Leipzig in 1926, Marx followed it there. From 1930 he had close contact with Ulrich Rück in Nuremberg, for whom he worked as a restorer and expert in historical musical instruments, initially on a fee basis, mostly from Leipzig, from 1952 in Nuremberg at the Pianohaus Rück, until he was 89 years old. In addition to fortepianos (e.g. Anton Walter grand pianos owned by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), Marx was mainly entrusted with the restoration of keel pianos and clavichords , but also of stringed and plucked instruments. Without exaggeration it can be said that in the 20th century he was probably the restorer with by far the greatest workload and an enormous impact in the field of historical musical instruments. In addition to restorations, he also devoted himself to replicas, especially for Haus Rück (e.g. copies of WA Mozart's fortepiano and clavichord).

source

Ulrich Rück's estate in the archive of the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

literature

Ernst, F .: Obituary for Otto Marx . In: Instrumentenbau-Zeitschrift, No. 20, 1966, pp. 289f.

Web links

• Spinett [virginal] (Otto Marx) , Institute for Music Research Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg (short biography)